PM Orbán on the anniversary of the 1956 Revolution: “If we lose our freedom, if we lose our national independence, we will be lost, too”

October 23rd is a national holiday in Hungary, marking the anniversary of the beginning of the 1956 Revolution and Freedom Fight when our compatriots defied the Communist regime and stood up to Soviet military might. For decades, we were forbidden to celebrate it, to even talk about it, but today it’s among our most important national holidays.

1956 REVOLUTION

OCTOBER 23

HUNGARIAN FREEDOM FIGHTERS

It’s about freedom. It’s about Hungarians deciding our own fate. It’s about independence. And the spirit and struggle of October 23, as Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in his commemoration address, lives on today.

“[T]he forces of globalism are banging on the door,” Prime Minister Orbán said, “and work hard to turn us Hungarians into homo brusselsicus.” Speaking in front of the House of Terror Museum, once the headquarters of the Hungarian fascist Arrow Cross Party and the Communist secret police, the prime minister reminded us that we need to protect our freedom because nobody else will.

“I welcome everybody who understands that we, Hungarians are the people of freedom, we are a special nation of freedom,” the prime minister began his address, commemorating the 61st anniversary of the Hungarian revolution of 1956. “We want to remember that wonderful day in October,” he continued, “when a nation said, we have had enough, and the supporting pillars of the communist world order quivered”.

“Let’s just remember 1956,” he added. “How many would have thought on the morning of October 23rd, when they took the tram to work, that by evening in place of the Stalin statue there would be only two boots?” Orbán asked the crowd. “And how many believed in 1988 that within one year we would put a dent in communism.”

“They said [in 2010] it was impossible to send the IMF home. They said it was impossible to make the banks accountable. It was impossible to impose tax upon multinational companies. It was impossible to reduce utility costs. They said it was impossible to provide jobs to everyone, that it was impossible to resist migration, and that it was impossible to stop the migrant invasion at our borders via a border fence.” Hungary, he said, has carried out the “impossible” since 2010.

Each and every choice in Europe is decisive, according to the prime minister. We’ll soon see, he said, whether Europe will be able to revive its fantastic culture that thrived and shaped western civilization before multiculturalism.

“In the 20th century, it was the military empires that caused trouble. Now, it is the financial empires which have risen with the slipstream of globalization,” the prime minister said, and these forces “threaten everything that we think about Hungary and the Hungarian way of living”. After achieving our independence in 1990, now we have arrived at another milestone. We can’t steer Europe in the right direction, said Prime Minister Orbán, unless Brussels regains its sovereignty from the empire of financial speculators that has brought millions of migrants to Europe.

Central Europe, he said, is the last “migrant-free zone” in Europe and, as such, is at the center of the debate on Europe’s future. The stakes are high, he said, and we “shouldn’t underestimate the power of the dark side”.

“But we know,” said PM Orbán, “that we can stop migration, keep globalization in check, curb Brussels, sabotage the plan of the financial speculator, and we can put a strait jacket on the insane idea of a United States of Europe.” All we need is that the Polish, the Czechs, the Slovaks, the Romanians and the Hungarians join forces.

For Hungarians, according to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, there is no such thing as impossible. “In 1956, we saved the nation’s honor. In 1990 we regained our freedom, and in 2010 we embarked on the path to uniting the nation.”

“If we lose our freedom,” the prime minister said in closing, “if we lose our national independence, we will be lost, too.”